Our last week in the jungle snuck up on us like the ever-elusive jaguar we never saw! We spent these days wrapping up the final activities of our project. On Monday, we returned to the Santo Tomas primary school to paint and work on a grand masterpiece of a mural that included the themes covered during our lessons the previous weeks. We split into three groups and each worked on portions of the mural, each student then filled the tree with hand-print leaves, which led to giggles and paint smears on each surface. The next day, we showed them a short video of our time together and revealed the assembled mural. As we departed the school for the last time, Ana Cecilia, the teacher, concluded with a heartfelt speech about our visit.
Tuesday afternoon, we met with the APAFA parents association for a second time to finalize the details of our caretaker contract. We extended it to 24 months, and expanded the employment to all families with children in school, rather than exclusively secondary students. The costs associated with schooling are relatively high for these communities, which explained their enthusiasm at this employment opportunity. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of family representatives in attendance were women. We collected their signatures to solidify the agreements of the contract.
On Thursday, we bid farewell to our last plantitas, who until then, had been peacefully dwelling under the care of a palm next to our jungle home. Over the last 6 weeks, we have received and cared for roughly 150 seedlings, whom are now housed at the shadehouse that we built at the clinic. With several boat-trips and considerably lower water levels, this proved to be quite a tedious task, but our loyal Julio and Abran eased the process.
This last trip to the clinic marked the final step in our project work and we trudged through knee-high mud in our trusty rubber boots back to the pecca pecca boat, proud of our accomplishments and already nostalgic.
This bittersweet feeling continued to grow as we spent our last day with the Santo Tomas community watching the school kids annual soccer tournament in celebration of Peruvian Independence Day (July 28th). We cheered on our teams and watched them compete, barefoot, against neighbouring communities on the mud-covered hilly soccer pitch. All of the members of the community came together to celebrate the teams while sipping on masato and chicha brewed by the one and only, humbly graceful, Dona Alicia. Masato is a beer-like drink, made from fermented yucca, which was traditionally prepared by chewing the tuber and spitting it into a pot to sit and ferment. To our unaccustomed taste buds (except Anna’s, who seems to enjoy each jungle delicacy ranging from fried larvaes to fermented corn brew), it tasted more of forgotten sour milk in the mini-fridge of a college student.
In our final week, we officially checked off the majority of jungle wildlife we hoped to encounter when we saw three screeching spider monkeys playing in the banana tree outside our beloved dorm. This included tarantulas, snakes (unfortunately to some, not an anaconda), black caiman, several varieties of frogs and toads, sloths, dolphins, toucans, parrots, lizards, iguanas and countless species of jungle insects.
We were also happy to be able to visit Comandancia, a neighbouring community of Santo Tomas, where we watched soccer and visited the market. As we pulled in on our boat, we were awkwardly guided into the schoolhouse, where we were encircled by tables filled with arts and crafts of the community members. To our surprise, once we finished buying some goods, everyone packed up and left. Evidently, the market had been set up for our visit, which made us slightly uncomfortable. Regardless, we walked away with some new funky jewellery and enjoyed creamy aguaje popsicles as we watched the soccer game.
On Friday, our final day in the jungle, we invited our friends from the community over for a final meal together. Raul cooked up a delicious barbeque, while the rest of us prepared Ceviche with Julio’s mom, Eloisa. We greeted Dona Alicia and four of her grandsons, Dona Filomena and her mother and niece, and several others from Santo Tomas. The feast consisted of plaintain chips, freshly-cut chonta (heart of palm), barbecued chicken, rice, ceviche and cake, deliciously prepared by Mikaela. As the fiesta came to an end, with misty eyes, we said our final goodbyes in the hopes of seeing each other again.
On Saturday July 25th, after our final fill of Raul’s delectable cooking, we hopped on the boat at 7:30am to begin our five-hour long journey back to the buzzing and overwhelming city of Iquitos. We will miss the tranquility and cosiness of our jungle home, but look forward to reuniting with our families and loved-ones.
– Sally & Alessandra